


Phone Memory

by misqueme



Category: Deltarune (Video Game), Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Asriel Loves Taking Pictures, Family Bonding, Gen, Rated for Self Harm implication, kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 13:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,071
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18624682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misqueme/pseuds/misqueme
Summary: Asriel is feeling lonely and overwhelmed, so he goes through his phone.He misses Kris.





	Phone Memory

It’s been a long couple of years.

Asriel rubs his temples as he leans over his desk full of schoolwork, breathing through his impending headache. It reminds him of the time his horns were first coming in and all he’d felt was dull aching in his skull, constantly.

He reaches over, picks up his cell phone and gazes at his own reflection in the dark screen.

He’s tempted to call Kris. But... what would Kris say? How would Kris feel?

Asriel’s sibling has always been a bit of a mystery. Oddly restrained, constantly refusing and disagreeing with everything everyone said. Kris lived life as if it was one big inconvenience— as if everything you were asked to do or meant to be was simply a punishment.

As a result, Kris acted very strange. Interacted with people as much as possible, trying to learn about them, but simultaneously sticking as close to Asriel as able. Kris refused to make friends beyond the goat family, but seemed to enjoy going around town poking at people. Finding out what made them tick.

Kris was, in short, a very creepy kid.

But Asriel knew better. Asriel had been there on those nights where Kris crawled into bed and cried for an hour. Asriel had seen the marks on Kris’s arms that suddenly started appearing, and had consequently made his sibling pinkie-promise to never do such a thing again.

And Kris may not have been a normal child, but anyone who lived and breathed knew that someone who broke a pinkie promise was basically immoral.

Asriel sighs and rests his chin on the wood, unlocking his phone to look at his favorite pictures of his sibling.

There was one picture that was his most favorite— it’s taken on a chilly fall day, from the cross country finish line. On that day, Kris has asked to join Asriel at practice, and had eventually ended up riding on the goat brother’s shoulders all around the track.

Asriel had crossed the finish line dead last, and he was red-faced and panting, but Kris was holding onto his horns with glee. And laughter. _laughter._ From Kris.

Asriel lets his thumb hover over the picture for a moment, staring at the frozen moment of happiness. The picture isn’t very good quality— Toriel had been laughing when she took the picture, and therefore it was blurry. But the orange leaves in the background highlighted the smile on Kris’s face, and it was still a good picture.

Asriel swept to another good one— when they’d gotten their Christmas sweaters. Asriel was sitting under the tree, beaming as he tugged the wool over his then-hornless head. Kris had plopped into the other sweater face-first, and was hidden from view. The lights on the Christmas tree twinkled, and Asgore’s horns were just barely visible in the foreground.

The next picture was Halloween— but the only indication of that was the fact that the lighting outside was orange. It was very late, and Asriel and Kris were curled up in front of the television with all of their hard-earned candy. Kris had the little red horns on, (the ones that Toriel had obligingly bought once Asriel’s horns had started growing in and Kris felt left out), and both of them were giggling as they competed for the title of Mario Kart King.

Asriel sighs and rubs his eyelids. Things had changed, and very quickly, in the years before college. Asgore and Toriel had started fighting, more often, and Kris couldn’t handle that (in fact, seemed to fare even worse then Asriel). Asriel would often walk into his room to see Kris sitting on the bed, pulling the blankets to wrap around cold shoulders.

Asriel massaged his siblings’ head, (the same way Kris had done for him while his horns came in) and had worried. Because that’s all he could really do at that point, was worry, and he’d felt more and more like a terrible brother because he couldn’t even protect Kris from their own family.

The night before Asriel had to go to the court, Kris has climbed into Asriel’s bed and sobbed into his chest, pulling on his sweater with small hands. Asriel wrapped the teen up in his own arms, wondering when Kris had started being so small, because Asriel had always been a little bit older but it was only now that he was bigger.

The lawyers had been kind as they could be, and the social workers more so, as they drilled Asriel about where he’d like to stay. It was so much responsibility, all at once. He’d already been taking care of Kris and steeling his parent’s arguments, but this was really the final blow to his childhood.

With as much maturity as he could muster, Asriel decided that Kris couldn’t handle moving after the way life had been so far. 

They were staying with Mom.

And Asriel avoided his fathers’ heartbroken gaze, wondering what he could have done better, what he could have done right, to make this turn out okay for everyone.

Asgore insisted that it was nobody’s fault as he set up temporary stay in his flower shop. Asriel and Kris helped him move in. Kris’s arms had been shaking, and Asriel realized that Kris had been avoiding eating for the past few days.

They went home, and Asriel made Shepherds’ Pie (because for some reason Kris was more likely to eat something if it had the work ‘pie’ in it) and they ate in front of the television while playing video games even though that was very much against the rules.

And when Kris started crying in their bedroom that night, Asriel crawled into the other bed and cuddled up to his sibling without hesitation. At some point past midnight, Kris whispered that the pinkie promise they’d made had been dangerously close to being broken, and Ariel tightened his hold.

He doesn’t have any pictures of that, but the way Kris’s eyes looked in the dark is burned into his memory.

Asriel grits his teeth in worry. Kris... really wasn’t better off alone. Asriel almost hadn’t wanted to go to college, because leaving Kris and Toriel by themselves... it wasn’t ideal.

Asriel picks up his phone and dials a number from memory, letting it ring. He knew that Kris preferred texting over phone calls, but...

He wants to hear his siblings’ voice. 

It’s been a while.

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this to take a break from my multi-chapter fics, and also just because I love me some good Sibling Bonding, so I wanted to throw some of my headcanons on the table
> 
> Catch me projecting my own issues onto Kris lmao
> 
> Also I didn’t use a pronoun for Kris EVEN ONCE! It’s difficult but makes for better writing in my opinion UwU


End file.
